


Almost Lost

by CatKing_Catkin



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Angsty Schmoop, Brother-Sister Relationships, Character Study, Developing Relationship, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Dynamics, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Introspection, Minor Keyleth/Vax'ildan (Critical Role), POV Multiple, Panic Attacks, Pining, Sibling Love, Takes place between Hubris and Aramente to Pyrah, Takes place between Hubris and The Rematch, Talking, Team as Family, Touch-Starved, Vasselheim Arc, Vax can't say what he feels, Vex is protective, Why are hugs so hard, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-04-01 00:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13986435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: The Slayer's Take has decreed that Vex and Vax will be on separate teams to hunt for creatures unknown, on pain of criminal prosecution should they fail. Neither twin likes it but, when their arguments go unheard, they prepare to cope with separation for the sake of the rest of Vox Machina.Part of that preparation involves taking a late night walk together. It ends with Vax considering some dangerous ideas, Vex worrying over how much things have changed, and both of them wishing hugs weren't so hard. The next morning over drinks doesn't make it any easier, but maybe absence can make the heart grow fonder and remind them how important it is to reach out every once in a while.After all, they are one another's most important person, and sometimes trying to put up a front so the other doesn't worry needs to take a back seat to just being grateful they're still there together.Takes place between Episode 17 and Episode 23.





	Almost Lost

**Author's Note:**

> It might just be me, but I really do feel like Vax got a lot more free with talking about how important his family is and how much he loves Vox Machina after the Vasselheim arc. And I do listen to audio-only versions of the show more often than now, but I went back to watch the actual live version of "Aramente to Pyrah" just to see the hug and it just about melted me. It seemed like Liam made a point of mentioning Vax engaging in physical contact more often after that, too.
> 
> That hug was partly what gave birth to this fic - the other part was Vax just going off on Huntmaster Vanessa when he learned that he and Vex were gonna be separated to begin with.
> 
> Co-dependent protective siblings are my jam.
> 
> I definitely made some assumptions in this fic, but hopefully they're correct assumptions - or at least interesting to read about.

“Perhaps I can talk them into letting us switch groups.”

“I doubt it. They seemed rather horny at the idea of splitting us up, brother.”

“Oh, I certainly noticed. What I meant is convincing them to send me with Percy and you with Tiberius and that way we won’t both be trusting our lives to the specific people who tried to blow us up _earlier today_.”

It was late and Vax was tired, but sleep was eluding him. Vex had finally managed an uneasy doze, curled up against Trinket’s side, but one look at her brother after he’d knocked on her door and she hadn’t been able to begrudge him waking her up.

They had started off in the tavern, picking at a late night snack of cold meat and stale bread to mop up the congealing beef fat. Vex hoped that by the time they wandered back that way the tavern might have started to actually bake some fresh bread for the new day. It would be a small comfort, but she was in the mood to take what she could get.

For now they were wandering down a quiet street in an unfamiliar district. Vex had Trinket lumbering on one side and Vax stalking on the other. Her two most important people, the two she could never imagine being without. Starting tomorrow, she might as well be leaving an arm behind.

Even so, she caught herself frowning at his choice of words. “You say that like they were deliberately trying to.”

“Is it better if they were trying, or worse? I don’t know about you, sister, but I don’t like the idea of allies _accidentally_ blowing me up. Or experimenting on me in ways that could lead to _accidental_ explosions.”

“Percy does not _experiment_ on me!” Vex said, and surprised herself by how heated her voice was there and then.

“He makes things where  he doesn’t understand how they’ll work, then he gives them to you to try out. What else would you call that?”

“A friend helping a friend! You can’t possibly think that’s worse than Tiberius willfully and knowingly throwing a fireball at you.”

“At least Tiberius knows what fireballs do! That arrow could have…poisoned you _and_ blown you up. Or something.” He flapped his hands helplessly for a moment, either lost for words or so full of them that he didn’t know where to start.

Vex snorted. Vax was being ridiculous. But…she lifted a hand to twine her fingers through Trinket’s fur, as if to physically brace herself for the thought that came next. Maybe she was being just as bad. In the end, the apparently undeniable truth of it was it was easier for them to be angry on behalf of one another than on behalf of themselves. She didn’t know if they had always been like that, but it felt like they had.

It probably all tied back to their father. So many things did, much as she hated to even remember his existence. Was that where it had started? Those years in his realm, so desperate for approval and acceptance that they had stomached all the sneers and snide remarks, derision and humiliation all for circumstances they’d been _born_ into by his will.

Yes, that was probably it. Vex remembered forcing herself to stomach so much in the desperate hope that her father might love her as freely as her mother had. It was only when the abuse had crossed over to Vax that she had ever been able to remember herself. Maybe the same had held true for her brother. Maybe the same held true for them both even now. Humans in Vex’s experience were quick to form a grudge. Elves in her experience were slow to let go of them. They really did have the worst of both worlds.

But they also had each other.

At least until tomorrow.

“Well, it didn’t,” she said, and swallowed past a suddenly, painfully dry throat. She had to keep her voice steady, she _had_ to. She had to protect him, like she always had, and right now that meant guiding him until she couldn’t be there to do it anymore. “And, and even if Tiberius knowingly and willingly threw a fireball at you at least he killed that thing when he did it, so he made it count, I suppose. Brother, I know you’re upset. So am I! But don’t let that make you _ridiculous_.”

“I’m not being _ridiculous_ , I’m being _cautious_ , which is basically my job in this group! I don’t trust these Slayer’s Take shits, for all we know they’re just trying to get rid of us and save themselves the court costs, or…”

“Do you want to leave?”

That brought him up short. Just to make sure he stayed that way, Vex circled around to stand in front of him, her hands on her hips, looking up squarely into his eyes. She almost reached out to take his hands, as if by doing so she could keep him physically tethered here, but she held back. At some point the two of them had just…fallen out of practice in reaching out for each other, and now was not the time to try again, because if she did then Vax would know how scared she was.

At least Vax still seemed to be too startled to have seen the momentary wavering in her eyes. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Do you want to leave?” Vex repeated, before gesturing around herself. “Here! Them! If you don’t trust anyone in Vox Machina or out? The three of us, we could be out of Vasselheim and fifty miles away before anyone noticed. The Slayer’s Take would probably focus on putting the rest of them on trial before they came looking for us, so they’d never find us. We could just go back to hiding out in the woods, brother. It could be…” And her Vex had to blink rapidly against the sudden, dangerous threat of tears because _god_ , she hadn’t meant this to sound as tempting as it suddenly did. “It could all be like before.”  

It wasn’t that she didn’t love Vox Machina. They were her dearest friends. She would never be as free at saying it as Vax was, but they were her _family_. It wasn’t that she would ever leave them now.

But in that moment, it hit Vex how much safer and how much _easier_ life had been back then. How no one had ever been able to take her brother away from her.

She knew she would never agree to leave. She knew _Vax_ would never agree to leave. But in that moment, Vex felt just the tiniest flicker of uncertainty. Judging by the shadow that passed across his eyes, for just a moment so did Vax.

But he needed to say right here that he would stay, and so did she, because Vex knew otherwise that neither of them would be fully committed to just getting through this and coming back with their friends.

In the end, Vax didn’t say it, not out loud. But she saw the answer in him anyway, in the way he slumped, in the tiny sigh, in the way his gaze fell to their feet. It was the look of a man resigned to his fate, not the look of a man resolved to change it. And that was good. That was what they needed right now. That was what their friends needed right now.

But in that moment, Vax looked so young and anxious that Vex was ready to throw their usual ways out the window and hug him tight.

Fortunately, before she could muster up the resolve to do so, Vax looked back up at her, smiled in a way that was obviously forced, and clapped her on the shoulder. “Come on, Stubby,” he said. “I remember seeing a shop three blocks up that sells some unidentified but interesting looking grilled things. Want to try some? My treat.”

“Magic words!” Vex replied cheerfully, punching him in the shoulder, and following behind as Vax turned down a side street and motioned for her to follow. “Let’s go!”

And then they would both go back to the tavern, and try to sleep, and in the morning they would go their separate ways.

But they would also see each other again. Their friends would see to that. So Vex was glad that Vax had stopped her from getting all emotional and mushy. She told herself insistently that she was glad. Now was not the time to change how things had always been, because they would be back to normal soon. Vax needed to know that Vex was not worried, and so he had no reason to fear.

Even if she thought to herself, when she finally bedded down for the night, that maybe a hug to see her on her way could have eased some of the worried ache in her heart. The urge surprised her, and so she shoved it out of her mind and just focused on the smell of Trinket’s fur.  That was just the sacrifice siblings had to make, sometimes.

*  *  *

“It’s like your feet _smell_ , brother,” Vex said, pulling a face as she set down her tankard.

Vax, for his part, found the taste to be not entirely explicable but absolutely entirely awful, to the point that “feet” was probably underselling it. “Oh, that’s rather _uncouth_ , wouldn’t you say, dear sister?” He cast her an affronted sidelong glance, then stuck his foot in her face without further hesitation. Vex leaned away and swatted his leg down without missing a beat, and Vax chuckled before turning back to the arduous task of actually finishing his drink.

Still, as he gamely tackled sip after sip, he had to admit that the barkeep had spoken true. This was absolutely what you wanted if you wanted to wake up in the morning, especially if that morning held an arduous task ahead of you. After choking this down, anything seemed preferable by comparison. He felt like his sinuses had been smoked out by a dragon. But he also felt alert, and that was good. He needed to stay on his toes for whatever The Slayer’s Fucks were going to throw at him today.

Neither of them said much to each other after that, probably in part due to the fact that it was early and they were both tired. Their late night walk hadn’t done much to help Vax sleep, and Vex didn’t look much better. And probably in part due to the fact that if they didn’t say anything, this felt almost normal. This could have been just another sleepy morning before they set off on another grand adventure with the rest of their family.

Except, when he saw Vex’s ear twitch, when he saw her look back towards the stairs, when he followed her gaze to see that the rest of _her_ party was coming down, Vax knew that the time for pretending was over and the time for goodbyes had come. That realization was accompanied by a strange, suddenly rush of panic that rose in his throat like bile and made his hands feel cold, heavy, and useless. Panic usually made Vax do one of two things – freeze, or rush into action, and right now there was no action he could _take_ to stop Vex getting to her feet and looking down at him with a sad, strained smile.

“See you on the other side.”

Vax was seized by a sudden, directionless, nameless dread. He was seized with the desperate urge to hug Vex tight as if he could physically hold her here and keep her safe from it, right with him where she belonged. But his limbs wouldn’t move, and maybe that was best. There was no reason to go changing how things had always been. There was no reason to give her more reason to worry. She clearly knew that. She had always been smarter than him.

“Indeed.” He forced a smile instead. “Stay safe.” And he turned back to his empty tankard while he listened to her head towards the door.

“Bye, Vax!” Grog called, loud enough to make a couple of other early risers at the bar flinch.

“Bye, Grog!” Vax did not look back at the goliath, but raised a middle finger in the general direction of the booming voice, and thought to himself that if Vex had to be going alone and unsupervised with Percy, then at least she was also going with Grog. That balanced things out, a bit.

He couldn’t have guessed where Scanlan fit in to this mental equation.

Tiberius and Keyleth tried to sooth him after that, of course they did, but Vax was not in the mood to be soothed. He was in the mood to get this over with. He had just about convinced himself by the time breakfast was over with that this was just a minor inconvenience, an insult to be borne, and when Vex was back they’d laugh about it later.

That resolution lasted exactly one hour more, until they were waiting to see the Huntmistress. It was Keyleth who first mustered up the nerve to ask Mertin: “And what were they contracted with?”

“Oh, nothing,” said the greasy little halfling. “They’re going to kill a dragon. Would you like me to get the mistress for you?”

“Excuse me?” Vax asked, in a voice so small and anxious that he barely recognized it as his own.

Yet something on his face certainly seemed to give Mertin pause. The other man took a step back, his gaze darting towards the door. “I’ll take that as a yes. I’ll be right back.” And so he was, as soon as he had Vanessa to hide behind.

A lot of things ceased to matter, after that, everything but _get the job done_ and _keep my family safe_. Keyleth called him grumpy, and that was _fine_ , as long as she was alive to say it. The Slayer’s Take had sent _his sister_ after _a dragon_ and Vax was resolved to the very limits of his being that they would not take anyone else he loved away. He couldn’t be there to help Vex. All he could do was pray for her safety – that seemed to work for Pike, maybe Serenrae would also take pity on him.

In the meantime, Keyleth and Tiberius were _right here_ and he was not going to let anything happen to then. He could do that much. He _would_ do that much. It was a resolution that kept his spine steady there in the depths of the Velvet Cabaret. It let him hold on to enough of himself to keep his daggers away from Tiberius when the ghost took hold of him. And if it also meant that he momentarily forgot himself and kicked that tiger-faced bastard into a pit of acid, well…at least Keyleth was smart enough to salvage what they needed from the smoking corpse.

He remembered exactly one point during that entire damn day where he smiled and meant it. It was when Keyleth conjured up a feast in a dusty, damp cellar for them all to sit down and enjoy. It was when they all sat together, stuffing their faces, old friends and maybe-new. Vax remembered Thorbir telling a joke that Kashaw actually smiled at, remembered Tiberius eating raspberries off his claws with pleased mumblings in between bites, remembered Keyleth smiling as she offered him some cheese. Their fingers brushed as he took it, and in that moment Vax wanted to tell Keyleth that she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen.

His nerve failed him in the end, just as it had when he’d said farewell to Vex. Vax just peeled her an apple instead and hoped that would do for now.

Yet in that moment of quiet and peace, he still felt himself bolstered. When Vex got back, he was going to give her the biggest hug. He was going to tell her that he had missed her desperately. And even if he intended to keep right on teasing and messing with her, he was also going to make sure hugs and hand-holding became a little less uncommon - and maybe hopefully a little less embarrassing - from here on out.

Things had changed from their time in the forest, and that didn’t have to be such a bad thing. They both had far more family now than they ever could have dreamed of, and maybe that meant they didn’t have to try so hard to keep up a front for one another.

*   *   *

The journey back to Vasselheim had taken a bit longer than the journey to face their quarry. Not only was Grog’s horse in no fit shape to bear him any further, but Percy and Scanlan were in no fit state to hurry. Lyra had disintegrated a giant, Zahra had dealt the finishing blow to Rimefang, but neither of them could knit broken bones or stitch torn skin. So Vex had done what she could with bandages and thread and healing potions, and it had been enough for now.

Maybe this would even be a good excuse to let them all go see Pike once they got back to Vasselheim.

Vex, for her part, just felt tired and drained. The raw adrenaline high that had come from the end of the fight had faded two days ago and left nothing in its place. She kept remembering Rimefang’s teeth as they came away bloody from Scanlan’s body. She kept remembering Percy laying sprawled on the ground as the shadow of Rimefang’s tail fell over him. She kept remembering her own damn _fear_ , so persistent, not leaving her until almost the last moment.

Vex was tired. Zahra was lovely, Lyra was sweet, and she fully intended to keep in touch with both, but for now Vex just wanted to reunite with the rest of her friends, give her brother a hug, and put this entire ridiculous mess behind her. Embarrassment be damned, worry be damned, she was giving Vax a goddamn hug. If their half of Vox Machina had been sent to kill a _dragon_ , she couldn’t imagine what his half had been tasked with.

More than once as they traveled back, the traitorous thought sneaked in that there was a chance that Vax might not be there when she got back. If he and Keyleth and Tiberius had been sent off to fight something as terrible as Rimefang, maybe they hadn’t had a Zahra with them to make sure they made it back.

Maybe Vax was already dead and she didn’t know it and she’d never get the chance to do something as simple as hug her brother ever again.

Whenever those thoughts crept in, Vex went and stuck her face in Trinket’s fur until she felt better, or else sneaked a drink out of Grog’s ale. If he noticed, he didn’t say anything just this once. Neither were perfect solutions, but they did the job and kept her sharp enough to lead everyone safely back to Vasselheim.

Of course, the truly _indecent_ amount of money they made upon finally arriving back in Vasselheim, returning to the Slayer’s take, and turning in their assorted takings did enough to distract Vex for a few moments from her worry. And by the time she was reminded of it, it was due to the sound of several pairs of footsteps hurrying down the stairs towards them.

Vex barely had enough time to turn around and smile at her friends before Tiberius had rushed forward to embrace her with warm arms, already launching into words about how much he’d missed her.

“Ow, ow!” she heard Percy yelp off to her left, followed by Keyleth apologizing profusely.

“Everybody else is getting a fucking hug!” Grog boomed, before she saw him alleviate the discrepancy by picking up Vax and enthusiastically cuddling her brother to his bare chest.

This left Scanlan out, an indignity he noted with a dramatic sigh, letting his arms fall to his sides. “If only she were here…”

“Come here, you!” Vax said, having been set down by Grog looking noticeably more disheveled. He bounded over to the gnome to enthusiastically tousle his hair. Scanlan indulged him in doing so for a second or two with a minimum of protesting, before batting Vax’s hand away even as he smiled up at the half-elf.

Vex, meanwhile, took advantage of Tiberius’ reunion with Grog to hurry over to the two of them. Words came tumbling out of her mouth at the sight of him like water over rocks. “He almost died!” she said, gesturing at her friend, looking at her brother. “How did you do?”

“I don’t think we almost…” Vax said, looking at her, and then the full weight of her words seemed to hit him, or maybe it was just the full reality of the fact that they were here and looking at each other and alive and _okay_. Vex didn’t know if she’d ever feel warm again, but her brother was standing in front of her and her friends were chattering around her, and…

And Vex didn’t know if she hugged him or if he hugged her but the end result was that they were hugging each other and Vex felt warm for the first time in days.

“Hi,” said Vax softly, and she heard the smile in his voice.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Grog grumbled, sighing theatrically from somewhere to her right. Vex raised a middle finger vaguely in his direction.

*   *   *

It really did get easier after that – offering affection, speaking up, saying what he felt. It was like a dam had broken, and somehow absence had found a way to make his heart grow even fonder. He couldn’t believe it had taken this long, but Vax felt freer now than ever to just _enjoy_ his feelings and how much he loved this strange, bizarre little family he’d been lucky enough to build up around himself. Just the fact that Keyleth didn’t laugh in his face when he let slip a nickname for her was more gratifying than gold.

Reaching out for reassurance got easier, too. When they all stood together on the scorched mountains of Pyrah, staring down into a twisting, blazing vortex of lava, Vax was already reaching for Vex before the memory of his last encounter with lava had even had time to fade. He remembered the pain, the feel of his own flesh dissolving, the _sight_ of it and the smell and the fear of being maimed forever, the heat of it was so thick in the air that he couldn’t _breathe_ even though they had to _run_ …

Then his hand found her shoulder, reassuringly solid and real, here to protect him just as he was for her. Vax blinked, his vision clearing from the shadows of the Underdark. He felt her hand wrap around his, squeezing his fingers, and suddenly had to blink his eyes clear for an entirely different reason.

He looked at her, she looked at him. “Are we doing this?” Vex asked.

There was a lump in his throat, so he didn’t trust his voice to answer. Instead, Vax merely nodded, then took a running leap into the fiery depths. He didn’t even have to look back to know that she would follow.


End file.
